Psychology

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Unique map that allows every emotional experience to be precisely the right "distance" from every other: dimension of arousal, dimension of valence (feeling)

Any definition of emotion must include two things:

1. Emotional experiences are always good or bad. 2.These experiences are associated with characteristic levels of bodily arousal.

Emotion

A positive or negative experience that is associated with a particular pattern of physiological activity. How are emotional experience and physiological activity related?

3 main theories of emotional experience:

James-Lange, Cannon-Bard, Two-factor

James-Lange theory of emotion

Stimuli trigger activity in the autonomic nervous system, which produces an emotional experience in the brain. see the bear, autonomic activity, experience. Different emotions are different experiences of different patterns of bodily activity.

Cannon-Bard theory of emotion

Stimuli simultaneously trigger activity in the autonomic nervous system and emotional experience in the brain. See the bear, autonomic activity/experience fear. Cannon argued weren't enough unique patterns of autonomic activity to account for all the unique emotional experiences.

Two-factor theory of emotion

Schacter-Singer. See the bear, autonomic activity, experience fear based on interpretation given what's in the environment. People can have the same bodily response to all emotional stimuli, but they interpret that response differently on different occasions.

Kluver-Bucy Syndrome

Monkeys whose temporal lobes had been removed would: eat just about anything, and have sex with just about anyone/anything. had a lack of fear-calm when handled/exposed to snakes.

the cortex is slowly using information to conduct a full-scale investigation of the stimulus. (deciding snake/stick)

Amygdala

received information directly from the thalamus. Needs to make one simple decision "Is this bad for me?" If the amygdala answers yes, initiates neural process that activate sympathetic nervous system in preparation for flight or fight.

Bilateral amygdala damage

anger, disgust, and fear not recognized

Emotion Regulation

Use of cognitive and strategies to influence one's emotional experience. typically to turn negative into positive. may sometimes need to "cheer down"

Reappraisal

Strategy that involves changing one's emotional experience by changing the meaning of the emotion-eliciting stimulus. thinking can change feeling. Crying can be either happy or sad.

Emotional Expression

emotional states influence the way we talk (intonation, inflection, loudness & duration), listeners can infer a speaker's emotional state with better-than-chance accuracy. Can also infer emotional states from how someone walks and facial expressions.

Affective forecasting

not too good at predicting our emotional reactions to future events.

Communicative Expression. Universality hypothesis

Emotional expressions have same meaning for everyone. Cross cultural research supports this. Congenitally blind persons make same expressions as others.

Facial feedback-pens

People who hold a pen in their teeth feel happier than those who hold a pen in their lips. Holding a pen in the teeth contracts the zygomatic major muscles of the face in the same way a smile does.

binge eating followed by purging, vomiting or use of laxatives, eat to ameliorate negative emotions, then experience self-loathing, guilt, binge to relieve guilt. Vicious cycle.

anorexia nervosa

intense fear of being fat and severe restriction of food intake, distorted body image, think fat when actually emaciated, high achieving perfectionists, have high levels of grelin in blood-they override signal.